Customer Reviews

The Ants

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by Mark Fitzsimmons

This is a fascinating, indispensible book for anyone interested in ants. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I have owned this book for three years and still haven't stopped reading it, probably never will. It is jam-packed with interesting and little known aspects of eusocialism in the ants, easily as diverse as its subject.

This is a semi-technical book, and entomological scientific jargon is used ubiquitously, so if you aren't interested in using the glossary frequently just to understand what you're reading, it may not be for you, but for the avid ant-watcher or scientist interested in social evolution, this is it. With the incredible drawings (including representative pictures from every known ant genera) and informative graphs and charts that shed light on even the most complex and difficult to understand socio-biological patterns, it is beautiful to behold and fun to browse and just pluck little tidbits at random. Even the expanded table of contents is thought-provoking and fun to read.

"The Ants" does more than simply summarize current knowledge about ants. It goes into details of the many different ways in which ants have evolved social structures and critically evaluates theories of ant colony dynamics and eusocial evolution.

This is a book that makes you want to drop everything and dedicate all your time to the study of ants. There are not too many books out there that are so well-written that they induce such emotions. It is a sizable book, and for those outside the field of myrmecology, it probably would not be read cover-to-cover. But every page of this book is fascinating, and considering the time and effort the authors put into it, it is no surprise that it has been the target of numerous awards. The authors dedicate the book to the "next generation of myrmecologists", and no doubt they have convinced many individuals to take up the field. The authors convey to the reader that the study of ants is a thriving field, and there are lots of research questions unanswered in their study.
Space prohibits a detailed review, so I will list instead the parts of the book that I consider most interesting: 1. The variation in the mode of colony founding among the different species of ants. 2. The mating habits of ants, in particular the female-calling and aggregation syndromes. 3. The description of the experiment showing the role of male pheromones in carpenter ants. 4. The statistical analysis of the time of swarming. 5. The comparison between different hypotheses for polyandry. 6. The universal occurence across species of 'nanitics' or 'minims' in the first brood and their ergonomic advantages. 7. The parental manipulation and offspring consent hypotheses for the origin of worker castes. 8. Eusociality and chromosome number as a strategy for reducing genetic variance. 9. The role of learning in colony-level recognition. 10. The presence of conflict between queens and workers in the management of new queens and males. 11. The existence of modulatory communication in ants (this was definitely the most interesting discussion in the book ). 12. The steps in the evolution of physical castes. 13. The result that colony-level selection is the opposite of what one would expect from individual-level selection, the later tending to improving phenotypes. 14. The use of allometric space to model evolutionary optimization. 15. The capability of associative learning in ants. 16. Ant-termite warfare. 17. The entire chapter on army ants.

Of course this is a great book. But it's also very big...and very technical. I know more about insects than the normal person and I was lost after the first couple pages. If you want a neat ant book read Journey to the Ants. It's more down to earth and easier to read and written by the same people. I wouldn't try to tackle this until you got a few entomology courses under your belt....

This is an excellent book. If you love ants, or you are starting to study them, or simply like to read excellent science books, this one's for you. It is very well written, and, although it is technical in many aspects, it is a delight to read it. It is full of pictures, diagrams and graphs of almost any aspect you can imagine. Almost any subject that the book addresses is explained at length in a clear and understandable way. However, there are some parts of it where you need some background in biology and mathematics to understand the book.

Both Holldobler and Wilson, who have a strong background in ant studies, have outdone themselves. In this book you can learn about virtually any aspects concerning ants, from their anatomy to their classification and more. And besides this, the book also teaches a lot of things not only related to ants but more general, like evolution and kin selection (applied not only to ants but also to eusocial insects). Learning so much about the ants makes you change your viewpoint about this little animal and makes you think about how incredible nature (or God) is to create such beautiful, incredible animals.

I was given this in 1992 for my birthday and spent a week reading it from cover to cover...and have returned to for pleasure ever since. Admittedly I was already fascinated by ants, but this is quite simply the best book I have ever seen about any group of animals. The authors write authoritatively and very readably about every aspect of ant evolution and behaviour, with humour and a clear passion for their subject; the illustrations are lavish and beautiful. Probably most readers will skip some of the more technical aspects, as this is also a work of reference with (beautifully illustrated) keys to all the major ant genera; but there are entire chapters on life-history, evolution, symbiosis and behaviour which are simply unrivalled in modern literature. From the awesome to the utterly bizarre, the ants are one of the pinnacles of animal evolution. This book is a labour of love, which does justice to the fantastic diversity of these insects, by authors who are the masters of their subject. A pleasure in every respect.

This book is truly remarkable. Written in the cool, precise, and accessible language of a traditional biological monograph, the text presents a comprehensive understanding of myrmecology. It is difficult to imagine a relevant topic which is not touched upon in the work.

The large-format book runs to 732 pages, is divided into 20 chapters, and includes a glossary and an extensive annotated bibliography. The text is fully indexed, and includes about one thousand illustrations, photographs, graphs, and charts, and includes 24 full-color plates.

The book is the definitive source of introductory scientific knowledge on ants, and also functions as an authoritative encyclopedic reference for all myrmecologists. The book has been extensively cited in biological and entomological literature, and is often used as the text for graduate-level seminars in biology.

Aside from its use as a research tool the book holds general interest for anybody interested in ants, insects, animals, or biology. Although a fair amount of the text is technical and of an advanced scientific nature, huge sections are fully accessible to anyone with a desire to learn more about natural history and the biological sciences. It makes an interesting cover-to-cover read and also makes a great book to skim through and focus on whatever catches your eye.

Highly recommended, very enjoyable, and a book that you will enjoy owning, reading, re-reading, and referring to for years to come.

I have always had an interest in insects from an early age. As a child I was always capturing ants and trying to setup ant colonies. So when I saw this book at the store I had to buy it. Just looking at it in the bookstore I was drawn in by the many pages of detailed drawings and photographs.

The book can be a bit technical at times. It used advanced (to me anyway) entomological terms that can sometimes make understanding some of the topics difficult. Though it is clearly targeted at an adult audience, I would not hesitate to give this book to a bright child who is particularly interested in ants.

Just about anything you might want to know about the ant is covered. The book did a good job of explaining some questions that I had always had of ants. For example, how can the queen continue to lay fertilized eggs endlessly without a "partner".

The only topic I might have liked seen described at greater length would have been keeping ants. How to excavate a colony. How to obtain a queen. And son on.

The Ants is the most comprehensive referance book available on the subject. It's extremely well written, but the language is generally geared towards entomologists. If you have at least a bit of a background in entomology, The Ants is a great referance (and even a decent read). However, if you are not so inclined to trudge through the more technical aspects, I'd recommend Journey to the Ants by the same authors, which gets much of the wonder and beauty of ants across in more of a novel format.

I received a copy of this book back in the early 1990s and have gone back to read it on several occasions. The book is massive consisting of over 730 pages in a large 12 x 10 format. It contains hundreds of illustrations including several color plates and some really amazing paintings of various types of ants and hive culture.

The information is exhaustive ranging from the extremely technical to the conversational. Parts of the book will be mainly of interest to the hardcore entomologist but the majority of the book is easily understood by the layman, well maybe not always easily but it's not too difficult and it's worth the effort.

I can't imagine a better or more complete text on the subject of ants. Anyone with any real interest in the subject should not be without this book.

I sat in a bookstore for three hours just reading pages from each section. Well laid out, well (duh!) researched. Astounding. It is verging on the edge of crazy to want to buy this tome seeing as how I am not in the field of cultural entomolgy, but I feel that I must own this book, just for the sheer volume of information it contains on those tiny ants. I never contemplated that this much dedication and care would be taken to understand them. Very cool.